Smile, Little One
by uponagraydawn
Summary: A series of one-shots centered around Tadashi raising baby Hiro.
1. You're Here, and I'm Here

**Title: You're Here, and I'm Here**

 **Prompt: Tadashi suffers from nightmares, and a five-year-old Hiro does his best to comfort him.**

 **Words: 1.3k**

 **Hello, I'm here with another BH6 AU. This time it's what's commonly known as the Baby Hiro AU! If you keep up with my Tumblr at all, you probably know that I've drawn a ton of little comics and things for this AU, which is probably my favorite of all the BH6 AUs. If you're not familiar with it, it's exactly what it sounds like. Hiro is aged down about ten years, and Tadashi is his guardian.**

 **I posted this one-shot on Tumblr too, but I want to add more to the collection. I have a few prompts from Tumblr that I'm working on, but I'm open to more suggestions if anyone has any! (No promises, but I like to hear what you guys want to read.)**

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He's lost track of how many different ways he's watched his family die in his dreams. It always involves fire somehow, even if it's only to burn away the remains of whatever horrific event had transpired. The worst part is that there is never anything he can do. He's always standing just outside of the scene, and when he tries to run or scream, it's like he's submerged in water. His movements are slow and sluggish and no matter how loudly he screams, nothing more than whispers leave his mouth.

He's watched his parents and Hiro walk right over a cliff without realizing it was there. He's seen candle flames grab their clothes and swallow them. He's watched them be eaten and mugged and crushed and blown to bits.

It wouldn't hurt quite as much if Hiro wasn't a part of it. That way he could wake up and calm down by reminding himself of the actual nature of his parents' death—that it hadn't been nearly as horrific as they are in his dreams. It's been a few years since they died, and he's healed considerably since then. The nightmares rattle him and leave a yawning ache in his chest cavity, but he doesn't feel quite so completely devastated anymore. The ache is deep-seated and familiar. He's used to it.

The problem is that Hiro always dies with them.

Whether he's fully realized it before or not, it's his deepest fear. Losing his baby brother. Breaking the promise he made to his parents' gravestones, and to himself. Not getting to watch Hiro grow up and do incredible things with his genius mind. _Failing_ at the role he's taken on, even if it was thrust upon him unfairly. Being completely, utterly alone.

Nothing about their lives is fair. He tries not to think about that too much, but Hiro's life ending prematurely would break him for sure.

His incessant nightmares thrive on this fact.

Sometimes he screams himself awake and it takes an alarming amount of time to calm himself down and get his heartbeat under control. He can't even _begin_ to regain his peace of mind until he steals over to Hiro's room and sits by his bedside for a while, watching him breathe and making sure he's all right. Then he can usually go back to bed and spend the rest of the night in an exhausting half-sleep.

As far as Tadashi knows, Hiro is oblivious to the fact that he suffers from nightmares. It's certainly not something he'd ever share with the five-year-old. He does all he can to make sure Hiro feels safe and secure, and informing him that his older brother constantly dreams about death wouldn't be good for his peace of mind. So Tadashi deals with it privately in the dead of night.

It comes as a shock, then, when he's woken from a nightmare for the first time by something other than his own fear. Tiny hands, not nearly big enough to cover even half the expanse of his shoulder, shake him fervently and successfully pull him from fiery delirium.

His eyes snap open and he jolts upright with a loud, ragged intake of air. It's a moment before he can even think straight enough to notice the small form sitting at his side, watching with wide, frightened eyes that gleam in the city light leaking between the cracks in the blinds.

"Dashi?"

Hiro's voice is soft and scared and unsure, and Tadashi immediately regrets the fact that his little brother is seeing him like this.

He sucks in a few lungfuls of air, trying to bring his heartrate down and wipe the terrible images from his mind. After running a hand through his hair, he's finally composed enough to speak. "H-Hiro? What is it? Are you okay?"

"You were yelling," is the only reply Hiro gives.

Tadashi closes his eyes and takes another deep breath. He'd been hoping that, maybe, Hiro had come to his room for a different reason. So much for that. He urges his lips into a smile, even though he's not entirely certain Hiro can see it in the dimness. "I just had a bad dream, kiddo. Everything's okay."

Hiro's face shifts beneath small flecks of light as he tilts his head a little. "You have bad dreams?"

Tadashi chuckles softly. "Everyone has bad dreams, bud."

"Are you scared?"

His eyebrows wrinkle in amused confusion. "What?"

"When I have bad dreams, I get scared. Are you scared too, Dashi?"

Something in Tadashi's chest constricts painfully. "I—uh—"

Suddenly Hiro scoots on his knees to get closer to Tadashi. His little arms reach out to press something against his brother's chest.

Tadashi lifts a hand to find that it's the stuffed robot he'd made for him a couple years ago.

"Hug Baymax," Hiro says as he rises to his feet.

His large brown eyes stare at Tadashi imploringly, expectantly, until the older boy finally wraps his arms tightly around the toy, crushing it against his chest. Tadashi then feels Hiro's tiny five-year-old arms circle around his neck, followed by the soft pressure of his pudgy cheek against the side of his head.

It's all he can do to stop himself from laughing. "What are you doing, knucklehead?"

A small hand pats the top of his head. "It's just a dream, Dashi. It's not real."

And then Tadashi recognizes this sequence of action as all the things he's done for his little brother when Hiro is the one having nightmares. Warmth pools in his chest, leaks down to his gut, and pressure begins to build behind his eyes. The little stuffed toy Hiro calls Baymax falls into Tadashi's lap as he lifts his arms to envelope his baby brother in a tight and somewhat desperate embrace. He hopes Hiro doesn't pick up on the way his lungs shudder as he sucks in a breath, but now there's moisture spilling from his eyes and he can't seem to monopolize the strict self control he usually prides himself on. Chalk it up to the late hour and the fact that his emotions are still fluctuating from the nightmare.

Hiro's thick black hair smells clean and comforting as Tadashi buries his nose in it. "Thanks, buddy," he chokes, voice raspy no matter how hard he tries to steady it. "You're awesome, you know that?"

"You're awesome, too!"

A wavering smile and another mumbled "thanks" pass across Tadashi's lips. He allows himself a second or two longer to hold Hiro tight against him before pulling back and placing his large hands on the boy's small shoulders. His mouth opens with the intent of telling Hiro that it's time to go back to bed and get a good night's sleep, but one look into his face breaks Tadashi's will. Now that Hiro's awake, the thought of parting with him is suddenly very difficult.

Instead, he gives his brother an excited smile. "I think we need some chocolate milk, Hiro. How about you?"

Hiro beams and nods in eager agreement, so Tadashi returns Baymax to him and scoops the boy up in his arms.

The kitchen is dark, lit only by the neon hues from the city that find their way through the curtains, and Tadashi doesn't bother turning any other lights on. The refrigerator provides enough illumination when he opens the door to grab the milk carton and the bottle of chocolate syrup. Hiro sits on the countertop, feet swinging back and forth, and watches Tadashi mix up two glasses of milk. The digital microwave clock reads 2:43, but it doesn't matter this particular night. The two brothers sit in the little kitchenette in the dark and drink chocolate milk together, because sometimes things like this are just necessary. And when Hiro gets sleepy halfway through his cup, Tadashi scoops him up again, tucks him in his bed, and crawls right in behind him.

It's the best sleep he's gotten in weeks. Tadashi sometimes swears that Hiro holds him together when nothing else does.


	2. Small Blessings

**Title: Small Blessings**

 **Prompt: Tadashi has a mental breakdown due to stress, and Hiro just wants to help his brother feel better.**

 **Words: 2.2k**

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Tadashi considers himself to be pretty well put-together. He's good at being patient (and getting better by the day) and long-suffering—two traits that might be the only things that've gotten him this far. Between looking after Hiro and looking after his friends, it would've been impossible not to cultivate them in order to cope. The fact that they come naturally to him anyway is a fortunate coincidence.

But there is a limit to them. He's neared it before, but he's never been quite pushed over the edge.

Not until now.

Things had been piling up recently. He thought he'd be able to handle it all right, as he always managed to handle everything, despite having a heavier load on his shoulders than most people his age. But it seemed as if everything suddenly decided to avalanche at one time. His professors had been piling on the projects and papers as the end of the semester—and finals—drew nearer. He had been doing his best to get a head start on everything; he studied and read over notes and worked on rough drafts while stuck in traffic, waiting for Hiro to be let out of kindergarten, on the bus to work, and anywhere else he found he had a spare minute. It wasn't enough, though. If he hadn't had anything else to worry about, he probably would have barely been on top of everything.

But there _is_ more that he has to worry about. There's always more. There are the bills and the expenses. There's the work that steals hours of his time every day so that he can pay those bills and expenses.

And there's Hiro.

Every time he finds himself regarding his little brother as just another item on his to-do list, he feels his stomach turn nauseatingly. Hiro's not a burden. Tadashi should never feel frustrated about having to care for him. And normally, he doesn't. But there are times, like recently, when he just wants to run far, far away from everything and scream up at the sky and the powers that be that it's not _fair_. It's not _fair_ that he has to raise a child the age of twenty, on top of being a student and _needing_ to maintain an excellent GPA. It's not fair that the responsibilities that usually fall on parents have fallen on him. It's not fair that he has to do it all alone.

But he, quite literally, cannot afford to let himself think things like that. Because if he lets himself think about how he feels like he's being pulled in a thousand different directions, how there are about a hundred things he needs to do and the consequences that will occur if he doesn't do them in a timely manner, and how he really can't see how he will get them all done, he will end up on the kitchen floor with tears streaming down his face.

Kind of like he is right now. With his back pressed against the cabinet, elbows resting atop drawn-up knees, and palms digging into his eyes as he convulses with silent sobs.

 _This is not helping anything,_ he tells himself over and over. He knows that giving into the stress is useless—he'd established that a long time ago. If anything, crying just makes things worse. But the harder he tries to dam the moisture leaking from his eyes, the harder it flows. The rivulets stream down his cheeks, drip off his chin. He feels them landing in his lap.

It's like he's completely lost control.

 _You're in a lot of trouble, Tadashi Hamada._

He can't do this. Any of it. He was stupid to ever think that he could.

And then there's the patter of tiny bare feet approaching on the kitchen tile.

Tadashi's head snaps up and his heart lurches in his chest. No, no, no, Hiro can't see him like this.

But it's certainly too late for that. The four-year-old is standing in the doorway, staring straight at him. A little bit of the yogurt he'd had as an after-school snack is smeared on his chin and the spoon is clutched in one little fist. He must have been coming to give it to Tadashi to wash.

Tadashi quickly uses the collar of his shirt to wipe his face and eyes. The tears stopped as soon as he heard Hiro come in, but he berates himself again for falling apart, especially while Hiro was home. He's making all kinds of mistakes today.

"Are you okay, Dashi?" Hiro asks. His big eyes are wide and confused and maybe a little frightened.

Tadashi immediately works to reassure him by smiling a smile that isn't genuine, but he hopes Hiro won't pick up on it. He can't have his little brother being scared. "I'm fine, Hiro." He's not; he's definitely not. His head is throbbing mercilessly and his raw, red eyes are burning fiercely, and he doesn't know how on earth he's going to finish the ten-page paper and project that are both due tomorrow when he has to go get groceries for dinner, help Hiro take a bath, pack Hiro's lunch, take care of some financial matters, and put Hiro to bed which is _always_ a long, frustrating process. And he doesn't even know if he can muster the strength to get off the floor. He feels awful, in every sense of the word.

But he smiles at his baby brother, and barely manages to pull himself together enough to act liked things are normal. "Everything's fine. Are you done with your snack?"

Hiro nods uncertainly, taking a few steps forward and holding out the spoon for Tadashi to take.

The elder Hamada pries himself up with what feels like a monumental effort and can't conceal a wince as a spike of pain lances straight through his skull. Hiro doesn't seem to notice, though, as Tadashi takes the spoon and turns on the faucet.

He sniffs loudly and wipes his nose on his sleeve as he soaps the sponge. He should've blown his nose before he got his hands wet. Then there's a gentle tug on his pant leg, and looks down to see big brown eyes gazing up at him.

"Why were you crying?"

Tadashi pauses in scrubbing the spoon. How in the world is supposed to answer that? He can't very well tell the truth. Taking a deep breath, he sets the spoon down, turns off the sink, and dries his hands on a dish towel. Then he crouches before his little brother and wets his lips. "Because…you know how sometimes you cry when you feel sad?"

Hiro nods.

"I just felt a little bit sad. That's all." He smiles again, and this time it's a little easier.

"Why?"

Tadashi sighs. Sometimes Hiro is more perceptive than he would like. "Because…because of some grown-up stuff. Everything's okay, though. I promise." He smoothes his hand over the boy's ruffled hair.

How he wishes that were true.

Hiro, of course, takes him at his word, and Tadashi can't help but be a bit relieved. The four-year-old nods again. "Okay. Are you still sad?"

It would be easy to spit out another blatant lie and say 'no.' But he feels so _heavy_ , so weighed down, so dispirited and exhausted that he hears himself saying, "Yeah, a little bit."

And maybe he wants the small comfort of sharing his unhappiness with someone, even if that someone is his baby brother. Logically, he knows it's a bad idea. He can't exactly dump his problems on a four-year-old, even if he wanted to. But something about simply telling Hiro that he doesn't feel his best is freeing in its own weird way.

And Hiro surprises him by wrapping his arms around Tadashi's torso. "It's okay, Dashi," he says in the tone he uses when he wants to sound more mature than his age. "Don't be sad."

Tadashi wants to smile, but instead his lower lip wobbles dangerously. He can't let himself break down again, and he knows if this goes on much longer that's exactly what will happen. So with a sniff, he gently pulls away from Hiro's embrace and ruffles his hair. "Thanks, kiddo. I'm feeling better already." He smiles then, hoping Hiro won't notice the way his eyes water.

"Good," Hiro says, with a large, toothy grin of his own.

Finally, Tadashi's able to laugh when he sees the yogurt smudge that's still on his brother's face. "C'mere, knucklehead," he says, and reaches up to wet the dish towel. Then he scrubs Hiro's face clean while the little boy squirms, face scrunching up comically.

When Tadashi releases him, he backs up and looks over at the fridge. "I'm hungry."

"You just had a snack," Tadashi answers, tossing the towel back onto the counter.

"But I'm still hungry."

The older boy's cheeks fill with air. There's not much food in the fridge right now, and it will take an hour to go out and buy some. Looks like they'll have to get takeout. Again. He needs to go grocery shopping badly.

"We'll get dinner in a little while," he says.

"Do we have to get that chicken that the man brings again?" Hiro whines, making a show of letting his shoulders droop and his lower lip jut out, clearly not happy about the prospect.

Tadashi laughs softly and shakes his head. He knows Hiro's grown tired of their usual takeout order. "Do you want pizza instead?"

"Nooo," the little boy moans.

"What do you want, then?"

Hiro looks down to where his hands tug thoughtfully at his shirt hem. "I want, um, I want that pas—pasgetti that Aunt Honey makes."

Tadashi sighs. "Well, Aunt Honey can't come over to make it right now."

"Why not?" He bounces on the balls of his feet. "She said she would come over whenever I want."

"She's probably busy, Hiro."

"Can we call her?" He bounces up and down faster. "Pleeease?"

Tadashi sighs again, this time in resignation. "All right. We can call her. Go get my phone, okay?"

"Okay!" With that, Hiro darts out of the kitchen.

The twenty-year-old's shoulders fall, his spirits seemingly leaving with Hiro. His brother is oddly adept at noticing when there's something wrong with Tadashi and never fails to make him feel better. But there's only so much he can do. The problems and deadlines still loom, heavy and dark, over Tadashi's head.

He sits down at the little wooden table by the window in the kitchen, where he'd originally started off before he'd collapsed under the weight of everything and ended up on the floor. There are bills spread out all over the tabletop, and he gathers them up into a stack. He can deal with them a little later.

He sits with his head in his hands until Hiro comes back with his cell phone. The small boy holds it out to his brother with a big smile. "Aunt Honey says she can come over!"

Tadashi blinks in surprise. He hadn't expected Hiro to call her already. He takes the phone and lifts it up almost hesitantly. "Honey Lemon?"

"Tadashi!" Her peppy voice fills his head. "Hiro says he wants me to come over!"

"You really don't have to," Tadashi rushes to say. "I know you're busy—"

"Pff, nonsense," she says, and he can almost see her swiping her hand dismissively. "I'd love to come make dinner for you and Hiro. I'm sure you don't have any food there, do you?"

"Well, not really, but—"

"Then it's settled. I'll run by the store and be over soon, okay?"

Tadashi clutches the phone against his ear. "Are you sure?"

"Of course!" she answers emphatically. "I can spare a few hours tonight, Tadashi, honestly. Besides, if Hiro wants my spaghetti, he'll get my spaghetti. You know I can never say no to the little guy."

Tadashi chuckles. "Yeah, I know."

Her voice softens and sobers a bit then. Tadashi can picture the sympathetic look she'd be giving him if she were there. "I know you've been under a lot of stress lately. I can stay for a while, maybe take care of Hiro while you get some work done after dinner?"

It suddenly feels like a little bit of weight has been lifted from his shoulders and he's filled with a sense of relief so great that he fears he might sink onto the floor again. He drops his head into his hand and presses on his eyes to dispel the tears that threaten to fill them. "That…that would actually be really great, Honey. Thank you."

"It's my pleasure. Really. Anything I can do to help out, I will. Don't hesitate to ask, okay?"

"Okay."

"I mean it, Tadashi."

A grin crosses his lips. "I know."

With the promise of being there within the hour, Honey hangs up and Tadashi releases a long, loud sigh.

For the first time in a long while, he feels like he can actually breathe. It's the small blessings that get him through tough times.

Hiro pulls on Tadashi's shirt, and he lifts the small boy into his arms and kisses the side of his head. "Love you, buddy."

"Love you, Dashi."

Hiro is definitely his small blessing.


End file.
